THE HISTORT OF SPIRITUALISM

Jervis, Deacon Hale, Lyman Granger, Judge Edmonds,
Professor Hare, Mrs. Mapes, Miss Mapes, and the
public mediumship of Mrs. Tamlin, Mrs. Benedict,
Mrs. Hayden, D. D. Home, and dozens of others.

It is not within the scope of this work to deal with
the great number of individual cases of mediumship,
some of them most dramatic and interesting, which
occurred during this first period of demonstration.
The reader is referred to Mrs. Hardinge Britten's two
important compilations, " Modern American Spiritu-
alism " and " Nineteenth Century Miracles," books
which will always be a most valuable record of early
days. The series of phenomenal cases was so great
that Mrs. Britten has counted over five thousand
separate instances recorded in the Press in the first
few years, which probably represents some hundreds
of thousands not so recorded. Religion so-called and
Science so-called united for once in an unholy
attempt to misrepresent and persecute the new truth
and its supporters, while the Press unfortunately found
that its interest lay in playing up to the prejudices of
the majority of its subscribers. It was easy to do
this, for naturally, in so vital and compelling a move-
ment, there were some who became fanatical, some
who threw discredit upon their opinions by their
actions, and some who took advantage of the general
interest to imitate, with more or less success, the real
gifts of the spirit. These fraudulent rascals were
sometimes mere cold-blooded swindlers, and some-
times seem to have been real mediums whose psychic
power had for a time deserted them. There were

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